Yes... But even on Linux I've been bitten so much by changes in 'standard' tools just on successive versions of centos, the last 10 years... ifconfig changing its output syntax (I know 'just use ip' well it changes sometimes too...), hostname sets a transient hostname now, hostnames with _ are now refused... netstat had some subtle changes some time ago too. free changed too. df, fricking df output format changed. So now, I just hit /proc and /sys, and document the hell out of it. Sure, new fields can appear there but they're new columns. The parser has to handle 'additional' columns. I trust Linus more with not-breaking-userland than the folks that make 'portable' tools.

Glad I don't have to support other OSes...